The Nature and Idea of Collecting

During the 1995/1996 year Getty scholars explored the
nature and idea of collecting as a topic broadly defined
to include: the social and institutional practice of
collecting; how it reflects the values of a given
community, region, and era; systems of display and
classification; and the emergence of new languages and
classes of collecting. Among the areas studied by this
year's Getty Scholars were the collecting practices of
Renaissance Italy, the dispersal of the art collections
of Great Britain after the Civil Wars of 1640, and the
social function of collecting in Oceanic cultures.

Getty Scholars

Paula Findlen, University of California, Davis,
Early Modern European History